Tuesday, 9 July 2013

Robert Kalina’s bridges are amongst the most well known
landmarks in Europe. The only problem is that they don’t actually exist.

When the European Union introduced its common currency in
2002, Euro banknotes were introduced in seven denominations. One side of the
notes displays images of windows or gates drawn from Europe's cultural history
from the Classical to the modern, representing Europe's openness and
cooperation.

With respect to individual national sensitivities of the
Euro nations, Austrian artist Kalina designed seven fictional bridges to
illustrate the reverse of the notes.
This use of imaginary architecture artfully avoided the difficulty of
allocating any specific nationality to banknotes that would be shared across
the union of 23 countries.

Now, a decade later, Dutch designer Robin Stam is building
all seven bridges for real. They will
span the canal that borders a new estate in Spijkenisse, a suburb of
Rotterdam. The first six bridges have
been completed, beginning with a red Romanesque bridge from the €10 note and an
orange bridge in the Renaissance style from the €50 note. These were followed by the €20 Gothic, €100
Baroque and Rococo, €200 iron and glass and €500 modern bridges, each tinted in
the distinctive colours of their respective banknote designs.

Robin Stam's Bridges of Europe

For Stam, the proposal began as something of a playful joke
until the enthusiastic Local Authorities in Rotterdam encouraged him to realise
the project. This whimsical
demonstration of the direct influence of art on life, however, is not a
particularly new idea.

Leonardo da Vinci may not have invented the helicopter but
he did draw the first picture of one.
Unrestrained by humdrum practicalities, artists and writers have long dreamed up
countless theoretical ideas, situations and inventions. It stands to reason that eventually many of
them will become a reality.

It is often observed how writers of Science Fiction have
informed much of our science fact. Carl
Sagan, the noted scientist and writer of Science Fiction, reflected eloquently on
this relationship in Pale Blue Dot, a non-fiction book that explores the place
of humanity in the universe:

"As far as I know, the first suggestion in the
scientific literature about terraforming the planets was made in a 1961 article
I wrote about Venus. The idea was soon taken up by a number of science fiction
authors in the continuing dance between science and science fiction - in which
the science stimulates the fiction and the fiction stimulates a new generation
of scientists, a process benefiting both genres."

Conceptual pioneers from Da Vinci to Sagan not only inspired
technological advances but also the language and look of the future.

The proposed Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid and its fictional inspiration, the Tyrell Building
from Blade Runner (1982). The Mega-City Pyramid is currently awaiting the sufficient technological
advances to allow its construction.

In a similar but vastly more ambitious example of a
fictional architecture made real, the Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid is a proposed
project for the construction of a massive pyramid over Tokyo Bay in Japan. If
completed, the structure would be 14 times higher than the Great Pyramid at
Giza and would be the largest man-made structure in history. The design is directly inspired by the iconic
headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation as featured in the 1982 science fiction
film Blade Runner. That such a real life
act of unrestrained hubris could be inspired by such a fictional depiction of
unrestrained hubris might even be enough to make some more paranoid purveyors
of fictional dystopia just a little more careful with sharing their nightmare
fuel in future.

Science Fiction, of course, is often intended to be
prophetic by design, yet the influence of art on our real life extends much
further than mere design. Countless
academics have explored the complex relationship between art, perception,
imagination and reality. The
ideologically driven architecture of the Bauhaus school pretty much invented
the modern cities of the late 20th Century whilst Leibniz's theory of Possible Worlds posits
that if we are capable of imagining something then it must exist – at least in
a parallel universe.

I find the most subtly compelling of these theories to be
the philosophical position of Anti-mimesis, which holds that art actually has
the power to dictate the way we see and understand our world.

Anti-mimesis holds that art does not imitate life but rather
sets the aesthetic principles by which people perceive life. What we observe in
life and nature is not what is truly there but is instead that which artists
have taught people to find there through art.
A famous proponent of this theory was Oscar Wilde, who noted that
although there had been fog in London for centuries, one only notices the
beauty and wonder of the atmospheric phenomenon because "poets and
painters have taught the loveliness of such effects...they did not exist till
Art had invented them."

All of which brings us back to Stam’s bridges.

Robin Stam's 200 Euro Bridge,

To avoid any unpleasant surprises, Stam asked the Dutch
Central Bank and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt whether they had any
objections to the project but they gave him their full approval, unconcerned
that these universal European symbols would soon be Dutch.

Nevertheless, there have been some dissenting voices who
have suggested that the construction of the bridges in Holland is contrary to
the original intention of European solidarity.
I would argue quite the opposite: that Stam’s project actually adds
another, more enriching layer of universal meaning to these symbols. To me, these fictional vistas that have been
conjured into existence may now serve to celebrate the power of our dreams and
ideas, remind us that the function and form of the world is not preordained and
serve as a reassurance and modest inspiration for all those who long to see our
world change shape and move forward again toward something new and better.

Perhaps I’ve given too much credit to the symbology of moneybut to extrapolate a quote from the
great Saul Williams: words, ideas and dreams matter because words, ideas and
dreams are matter. Or, as Pablo Picasso
put it more succinctly, “everything you can imagine is real.”

Surely that’s a better thing to celebrate than the musky
nationalism of old dead white men and the baleful antipathy of weary monarchs?

Mat is a sporadic maker of art, troubler of words and regularly finds himself entangled in miscellaneous quixotic creative ventures.His website is currently on a period of extended leave but you can follow his occasionally troubling stream of consciousness on Twitter.